
Hafizah Geter
WebsiteYears: 2010, 2011
Biography
Hafizah Geter received her BA in English & Economics from Clemson University, and her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. She is a South Carolina native currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Hafizah is a Cave Canem Fellow and was a semi-finalist for the 2010 “Discovery”/Boston Review Contest. Her poem "paula" received an Honorable Mention in RHINO's 2011 Editors' Prize. The recipient of a 2012 Amy Award from Poets & Writers, her poems have appeared in BOXCAR Poetry Review, RHINO, Drunken Boat, Columbia Poetry Review, New Delta Review and Memorious. Hafizah also serves as a poetry editor at Phantom Limb Press and an assistant editor at YesYes Books.Poem
paula
says when the moon came out
of her it was like a whitney houston song.
achy and full of high tones. she traces my fingers
over the scar, asks do i want to be beautiful too.
paula sucks on fireballs all day, says she knew
the 90s would be like this. i watch as she twists
the corner of her t-shirt around her finger and threads it
through a hot pink clip, her stomach glowing like a street lamp.
paula calls me late at night, says that this is a dream.
i wake to find her in the floorboards,
her laugh opening the curtains. she smiles
and says, the day she was born she watched god
die in a fire. we spend the afternoon nailing flowers
to our mothers. paula leads me to water,
says we are the baptism. together
we watch as summer drains the sky.
i show her how night lifts the windows,
but she says, it’s just her father’s hands.
after too much, paula tells me that sadness is like a girl
in a striped shirt. i put this in my book of important things.